| Success is about the journey, not the destination, but sometimes it can be useful to visualize success as the destination. |
| It was interesting to learn that interest is an emotion and shares the same properties of an emotion. |
| I really enjoyed the ABC approach towards thinking about my career |
| Implementation Intentions are one of the most effective methods for goal striving |
| Deliberate practice is the core characteristic of nearly all experts |
| Success feedback can be more effective than failure feedback - We need to be cognizant of this |
| Stress can be productive - we need to learn how to leverage it |
| Lean into Box 1 - Systemization is critical |
| Ideal mentors are authoritative |
| Try to be a giver, but also know that it's ok to say no at times |
Grit Lab Report
Hi Philip,
Welcome to your personalized Grit Lab Report!
We will go week by week, reviewing everything you have told us through Poll Everywhere.
We hope this will help you reflect on what you have learned and experienced during Grit Lab.
Important note!
Sometimes, you may not have been able to respond to all polls.
If the data for one of the polls is missing, the automatic report will display NA, or ““.
Okay, let’s get started!
The first half of Grit Lab delves deep intp the passion facet of Grit.
We like to call it Choose Easy, because we think gritty people pursue what they enjoy.
Putting it graphically, gritty people tend to pursue the intersection of these four circles.
The first time we met, you told us where you were on the grit rubric.
Regarding passion you picked Stage 3: I’m actively figuring out what my interests are by trying one or more of them out in some way .
Regarding perseverance you picked .
As you know, grit grows, so don’t worry if you are not yet where you’d like to be in your grit journey.
Hopefully, this class will help you become grittier each day.
In week 2, we looked at your interests.
Interest is an emotion, and it is the opposite of boredom.
Your interests are the activities or subjects that spontaneously grab your attention.
Trying things out and seeing how you feel is the best way to refine your interests.
In week 3, we studied values, your beliefs about what is important.
You said your top three values were power, self-direction, and achievement.
You wrote a “This I Believe” essay, and here’s where you located it on Schwartz’s value taxonomy.
When we talked about strengths in week 4, you said your personality strength was conscientiousness.
You said your top three talents were analytic, social, and artistic / spatial.
We then talked about goal hierarchies.
You said you felt totally clear about your top-level goal.
We discussed self-concordance, or how much a goal aligns to your deeply held values and beliefs.
A goal you said you will be pursuing for the next six months is to losing 15 pounds .
Here is how self-concordant that goal was:
Don’t worry if your self-concordance for that particular goal is low.
It might mean that you need to reframe that goal in a way that makes it more relevant to your deep self, or change it!
Remember that self-concordance is goal specific, so other goals might be more self-concordant.
We then transitioned to the second part of Grit Lab:
Work Smart
In week 6, we looked at goal setting and planning.
You WOOPed!
For your Wish, what you wanted to accomplish, you said Swim for 45 minutes 5 times .
For your Outcome, what would happen if your wish came true, you said Feel refreshed .
For you Obstacle, what it is within you that stands in your way, you said Laziness .
For your Plan, you created this when-then plan to achieve your goal: When I wake up, then I will swim .
Whether you changed your WOOP or stuck to that one, here’s where it landed between being a total fail, and going exactly according to plan.
And here’s how much you learned
These goals are hard, and despite our best efforts, our plans can fail.
The important thing is that you learn something along the way!
In week 7, we talked about deliberate practice.
You shared you’ve done daily practice in Swimming .
We learned that deliberate practice requires a challenging, hyperspecific goal, maximum concentration, instant feedback, and is often done alone.
In week 8, we discussed feedback.
Even though feedback can be hard to take, it is often the key to improve. So if you want to improve, seek it actively!
You said you felt Excited when receiving critical feedback, and Excited when receiving positive feedback.
We then turned to learning about stress.
In week 9, you reported feeling nearly an extreme amount of stress in your life right now, the primary source of it being school .
We also talked about adversity and failure.
Although related, adversity and failure are different:
Adversity happens to us, whereas failure is something for which we are generally more responsible.
However, how we interpret stress and failure matters…
Interestingly, research has found that people who believe that stress can facilitate learning and growth experience enhanced performance, well-being, and health.
And failure—not achieving a particular goal—can be interpreted as “I’m learning!” and lead you to look for the lesson in that experience.
We closed the Work Smart section of the class by talking about habits.
Throughout the semester, you practice habit building using your Build-A-Habit Guide book.
You describe the habit you chose as Work .
Whether you were successful in habit building or not, this is how much you learned.
Finally, what good is grit if we do not dream for others?
So, we transitioned to Paying it Forward.
In week 10, we looked at mentors: role models that take an active role in your growth.
Hopefully, your mentor was authoritative, being both supportive and demanding.
Here’s how you described them:
You also wrote a gratitude letter to Other .
In one word, you said it made you feel Great .
One way of paying it forward is having a prosocial, beyond-the-self purpose. Here’s how you responded to items assessing that.
… and so quickly we arrived at the end of the semester.
Here’s how your mood varied over these weeks.
Do you notice any patterns? Is there anything that correlates with your mood?
Here you can scroll through all the quotes you wrote to summarize each class.
In the final class, we looked back to everything we’ve learned together and to how our passion and perseverance evolved during this class.
Here are the comments from your Grit Lab Teammates:
| Gabriella Gibson |
|---|
| Philip is incredibly thoughtful. Most of the time he sits back, listens, and observes, and when he does share he always has something valuable to say. After being in a group with Philip, I’ve gotten the sense that he could truly talk to anyone - partially because he would use subtle social tricks to get them to talk about themselves, but more so because he is a genuinely curious guy. Philip also is very down to earth, and I hope to take the lessons I’ve learned from watching how he gets others to open up with me even beyond grit lab. It is easy to see why Philip’s friends think so highly of him - he is kind, a great listener, funny, and lighthearted. On the note of Discovery Projects, Philip’s conversation with Kevin of Alpen Rose was easily one of the most interesting elements of any Discovery project presentations I learned about. I remember the weekly check in after she had this conversation, and as he told us what he learned I could almost imagine Philip at the bar having this curious conversation. Philip’s discovery project is something I hope to recreate next year with my friends - hearing about how he bonded with friends and shared stories behind the drinks with them was genuinely interesting, and it was clear that this was a project he was excited about. I also appreciated that he extended beyond the cocktail nights into creating a pairing for the dinner course, and the thoughtfulness that he approached this project with was evident throughout his presentation. |
| Vishal Krishnaiah |
| Philip has been a grounded voice in our team from the very start. He’s funny, never failing to bring levity to our meetings, but also provides an important and deep richness to our conversations. He has also taken a genuine interest in our discovery project activities throughout the course, asking questions about our updates and giving encouraging comments about our efforts and our progress over time. I also really like how he approached his own discovery project, starting off by simply diving in head-on and learning from experience. This course would have been a lot less fun and meaningful without him. I want to thank him for his jokes and his authenticity, he’s definitely made my Grit Lab experience far better. Philip’s discovery project was definitely on the coolest topic of all the ones that I saw. He showed me that there’s much more to mixology than I thought there was, and now I kind of want to see what it’s like myself. I found the insight from the bartender at Alpen Rose that he shared with us to be particularly insightful because his advice gave a sense of reality to what work as a bartender is like, contrasting with the initial excitement that we all feel when starting our journey in something new and interesting as a hobby. This was unique to the presentations overall, where the rest of us talked about our interest in projects but did not fully consider how we would feel turning those projects into vocations, should we want to. I also liked how he spoke about how mixology interacts with food, expanding the areas of exploration that this new skill can provide. |
| Stanley Liu |
| Phillip is bold and unapologetic. I appreciate his candidness and willingness to voice his thoughts on any issues. He gives very practical advice and is not afraid to share what he thinks others can do differently. I was most impressed by Phillip’s desire to pursue his passions and hobbies. His discovery project into the world of mixology was one of my favorite presentations. I appreciated his persistence in learning the nuances of mixology and taking bartending courses throughout the semester. This was evident through the many drinks he learned to make and cocktail nights he hosted for his friends. I enjoyed working with Phillip throughout the semester. |
We hope you have emerged from Grit Lab a little grittier than you started.
Do you want to see how your grit rubric changed?
Drumroll please…
Don’t worry if the rubric doesn’t yet reflect growth. It is only a coarse measure that cannot replace your own self-reflection.
In any case, grit is not built in a day…
…remember that progress is never smooth…
…so stay passionate and persevering in the lifelong quest of choosing easy, working smart, and paying it forward.
With grit and gratitude,
Angela and the Grit Lab team.